


Would You Like Blue Fries With That?

by K_Popsicle



Category: Captain Marvel (2019)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Cats, Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, McDonald's, Post-Movie, Self-Discovery, Sorry Not Sorry, Stranded, stuck on earth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-20 19:01:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21286625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/K_Popsicle/pseuds/K_Popsicle
Summary: Minn-Erva survives the crash and gets stuck in a dead end job as a fast food server.
Comments: 16
Kudos: 16
Collections: Trick or Treat Exchange 2019





	Would You Like Blue Fries With That?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lucymonster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucymonster/gifts).

> To my receipt: I’m sorry it’s a compulsion! Don’t judge me! I already had it 90% written, what was I gonna do? Throw it away?
> 
> It's an unofficial sequel!

“Do you have a criminal record?” The teenager asks her. He’s got more pimples on his face than skin, but that doesn’t seem to stop him thinking he’s some sort of god amongst the peasants. Minn-Erva does not hesitate to lie.

“No.” It might not even be a lie, this planet doesn’t know who she is, and all her actions were sanctioned by the Supreme Intelligence. It’s highly possible that no-ones bothered to make her a criminal record.

“We might not have many shifts-“

“That’s fine.” She needs money, she needs to stay under the radar while she gets it, and unfortunately the people of this planet did not evolve a blue pigmentation in any of their populace so her options are limited.

“About your…” he stares at her and it’s clear he doesn't know how to follow it up.

“I’m blue.” She looks out the window instead of at him. He’s an idiot and she wants to crush his windpipe and slam his head into the table. Sadly, that is also not flying under the radar.

“Yeah that,” he agrees, “is that going to be permanent?”

Minn-Erva counts to ten very very slowly and then meets his eyes, “Yes.” She says clearly and has to suffer the indignity of him rolling his eyes at her like she’s the one being dramatic.

“Fine fine, but you have to work out back. I usually put girls at the counter, but if you can lift boxes-“

“I can lift anything you have.” She cuts him off because she will not be treated like some sort of weak thing.

“Okay then, welcome to McDonalds.” He holds out his sweaty hand, and she does not take it. Nothing could move her to touch the boy.

One of the men, Ter-Rii, shows her the ropes while staring at her in some sort of adulation.

“Don’t look at me.” She orders when she catches the reflection of the action in the splashback.

“Oh, sorry.” He ruffles the thick strip of hair on his scalp and doesn’t look at her again. This endears him to her almost enough that she doesn’t want to kill him every time he tells her she’s doing something wrong. Almost.

She goes home to the little shack she’d founded boarded up outside of town. There’s running water, and a lot of dust. She eats cold McDonalds and decides it is the worst food she’s eaten in the entire galaxy. She’s eaten gruel with more flavour while enduring barbaric conditions. This was somehow worse.

C-53 is a dead end planet with limited intergalactic communications and even more limited space travel. She needs a plan to get off the planet, but there’s only one that keeps coming back to her and she is _against_ it. So she brainstorms her options while the night wears on and she can’t sleep.

There are vermin in the trash bins. They scurry away from her as she hauls out one oversized trash bag after another. Most descent planets have gotten rid of vermin of that size, but apparently C-53 is a special kind of cesspool.

“Minnie we need someone up front.” Spotty boy ‘the manager’ shouts out and so she abandons the giant bag of cut chips to the freezer and tracks him down. He grimaces at the sight of her.

“Well?” She prods when he doesn’t explain what he wants immediately.

“Suki called in sick and I’m busy, so you need to do the register.” He’s drinking a cup of coffee and has a magazine in his other hand, she went through basic though, so she doesn’t argue and gets to the job.

“Is it contagious?” One woman asks, her baby cradled close to her as she stares at Minn-Erva.

She pretends she doesn’t understand, “The food is infection free, but also nutrient free. I would not recommend it for your baby.”

The woman looks surprised, then outraged, “Don’t tell me how to feed my baby! Where’s your manager? I’m going to make a complaint!”

Minn-Erva ignores the queue behind the woman, closes the register and stalks back to find the manager. He slams his magazine closed when she steps into the break room.

“Weren’t you on register?” He snaps.

“Someone’s asking for you, so I closed it.”

This apparently is tantamount to a crime against the Supreme Intelligence itself and he shouts at her for nearly twenty minutes while she serves the rest of the queue, then an hour after that while closing happens. Throughout the whole thing she is not required to do any of the cleaning duties. Since he can’t shout anywhere near as well as any of her CO’s and he’s as intimidating as a three year old girl. Minn-Erva isn’t too concerned.

She sees the cat somewhere in the second week. It looks much like a flerken, except it’s black with a hint of blue to its fur. It hunts the vermin, which the mohawked cook calls rats. It’s a quick short word, which means this species has to use the word a lot, which means they’re everywhere.

The cat does not like her, she does not like the cat. It flicks its tail when she’s around, like she’s interrupted its very important hanging-out-with-trash time. She throws a soggy burger bun at it to show her displeasure. It scurries off with an unhappy sound. The rats descend upon the burger before she’s even walked away. She hoped the cat comes back and eats them before she has to go out there again.

“You’re blue.” The old man ordering tells her, as if she does not know.

“Yes. Would you like fries with that?” She asks, fingers hovering over the buttons.

“Why do you ask?” He sounds suspicious. Minn-Erva tries not to have an emotional reaction.

“My manager will fire me if I don’t ask.”

“He should fire you anyway, look at you, you’re blue!” The old man insists. His wife hushes him and looks embarrassed. Minn-Erva’s not sure why. It’s not like anyone on this planet has seen a blue person before.

There’s grease in her hair. She tries to wash it out with the bar of soap she found in the bathroom but nothing gets it out, or keeps it out. She tries all the same, because it disgusts her. The rats and cat though don’t seem to care what her hair is doing and only that she is a receptacle for food. She can feel their little black eyes following her any time she has to haul a bag of old dried up burgers and dumps them into the giant bins. Locks of her hair stick to her face in a sweaty matt, and she grimaces and bears it because she is _not touching_ her hair right now. There is unidentified slime seeping between her fingers, and she needs to a medical style scrub before she’ll feel clean again. Even then…

The cat watches her and she hisses at it. It’s undignified, but who are the rats going to tell?

“Have you ever thought of changing it? You’d be prettier if you didn’t dye your skin like that all the time.” Minn-Erva does not look up from her task at the kid whose crept up from behind her, but he’s in her space rather quickly. She doesn't know his name, avoided it even though they all wear name badges (hers says Magda) because he makes her skin crawl. She doesn’t respond, so he moves in closer behind her, she sets the spatula down. “Aww, come on, we’re friends right?” His fingers creep onto her hips, his body right behind her. She turns to face him, and his fingers skim her skin as she does. She meets his eyes.

“You have three seconds to take your hands off me.” She warns. It is all the warning he gets and when the manager asks he’s not in a state to explain, and pretends to be distraught until she can go back to her base.

The cat adopts her, somewhere between wanting to shoot it and being disgusted by it, the cat decides they are best friends. Minn-Erva neither knows what to do with this, or how to get rid of it. It twines around her ankles whenever she takes the trash out. Meows at her in a squeaky little voice that has a crack to it, and looks starved despite all the rats and food scraps. She ignores it, shakes her foot when it rubs up against her, and tries not to think about where it’s _been_.

She wakes up one night a few weeks later to the thing on her chest. She throws it half across the room in horror, and it blinks at her surprised, then determinedly walks right back onto its spot on her chest. She stares at it wide eyed and horrified before she thinks about how dirty it is, and gets up dumping it on the floor. It squeaks piteously and she glares at it. There is no way that thing is clean, and a moment later there’s no way her bed is clean because it jumps back up where she had been and curls up again.

“No.” She tells it in no uncertain terms.

“Welcome to McDonalds can I take-“ Minn-Erva looks up and immediately glares at the cheeky blonde grinning on the other side of the counter. She feels a visceral hate surge through her veins, but it’s worse because her hair is lank and dirty, her uniform is a size too big, and she’s barely gotten any sleep all week. “-What do you want?”

Vers leans on the counter with her fist and cocks herself at an angle, “What do you think, Nick?” She asks her companion, “A cheeseburger and fries?”

“And a shake.” He says stonily.

Minn-Erva stares them in the eye and rings the items up methodically. “Is that all?” She asks as dryly as she can, and at that moment her manager is in hearing range.

“Don’t talk to the customers that way!” he snaps, scampering in to fix the damage. “I will send you back to cooking.” Is his threat as he smiles and apologises to Vers and her one-eyed friend.

“I don’t care.” She reminds him, because at least the hamburger patties were already dead and didn’t talk back to her. This was a hell, a hell that felt more like a hell now that Vers was here than it had the other night when she’d robbed a vet’s office for supplies to de-parasite and clean Rat-Trap.

She physically pushes the manager out of the way so she can glare at Vers from her side of the cash register. Her manager makes a sputtering noise that neither of them pay attention to.

“You know you’re blue right?” Vers asks with that little cock of her head that she does when she thinks she’s being cute.

“I want off this planet.” She says instead of dealing with the stupidity of that question. “Get me off this planet and I’ll leave you alone.”

“Wow, wow, wow.” The one-eyed man says. “You think we’re going to just, what? Send you home so you can go murdering more Skrull?”

“Yes.” Minn-Erva braces herself on the bench and leans towards them, she is much closer to Vers than she intends. “You will get me off this back-water planet and you will never have to see me again.”

“Until you’re killing our friends again.” The man counters, and Minn-Erva decides she doesn't like him, but is distracted from dealing with that issue when Vers leans into her space. It’s an effort not to pull back and that leaves them both far too close.

“Let’s take this somewhere else, what do you say?” Vers’ fist ignites like a warning and Minn-Erva looks at her barely pubescent manager who’s gotten back to his feet and looks to be working up to shouting at her.

“I quit.” She tells him before he can start, then pulls the ugly uniform shirt over her head and drops it on the counter. Her singlet top is more dignified than the grease stained eyesore anyway.

“Did Minn-Erva just quit?” Terry pops his head out from the back and takes in the scene. “Oh nice, are you blue all over?”

“Yes.” She replies because she can almost tolerate him and his mohawk after all these weeks.

“Rad.” And he leaves them to it, which is why she almost likes him.

“Are we leaving or not?” She asks Vers bored, and loves the way the edges of the blonde’s eyes scrunch up in an unimpressed squint.

They make her lead them to where she’s squatting. She’s not sure what they think she has but she stands by the door and indicates they should go in.

“Want me to go first?” She asks and Vers is distrusting and overconfident enough to walk in ahead of her. The man waits for her to go in ahead of him.

The cat is on the bed, nestled in amongst a pile of blankets and clean as a whistle. She has disinfected scratches on her arms but she had hygiene standards to maintain even in this dive.

“The cat?” The man asks, and Vers looks at it and shrugs. He puts his hand on a gun and Minn-Erva steps between them.

“It’s just a cat.” She explains but Vers bears towards it interested now.

“What’s its name?” She picks it up.

“Rat-Trap,” she answers without thinking, distracted by the stress she feels watching the little thing in clunky Vers hands. Both of them give her a look. “Are we done?” She snaps, because there’s clearly nothing to find in the dusty room and they seem to know it. Vers tucks Rat-Trap into the crook of her arm.

“Alright let's go.” Vers agrees, but Minn-Erva is staring at the cat and not moving.

“Put her down.” She instructs.

Vers looks at the cat then her, “Isn’t she yours?”

“She doesn’t belong to anyone.”

Vers puts the cat back down and then pretends not to look when it pads over to Minn-Erva and twines around her ankle. Minn-Erva reaches down one last time, runs her fingers over silky clean fur and says, “You’ll be fine on your own.” It’s only been here, with her, for a few days. It probably won't even remember her. It hurts in a way she didn’t think it could and she squashes the feeling down, looks at Vers and says, “Alright. Take me away.”


End file.
